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beehive tombs. I felt the same way I did right after May
died, only multiplied by a hundred.

August had said, "I guess you need to grieve a
little while. So go ahead and do it." But now that I was
doing it, I couldn't seem to stop.

I knew that August must have explained
everything to Zach, and June, too, because they tiptoed
around me like I was a psychiatric case. Maybe I was.
Maybe I was the one who belonged on Bull Street, not
my mother. At least no one prodded, or asked
questions, or said, "For Pete's sake, snap out of it."

I wondered how much longer it would be before
August had to act on the things I'd told her—me running
away, helping Rosaleen escape. Rosaleen, a fugitive.
August was giving me time for now, time to be by the
river and do what I had to do, the same way she gave
herself time there after May died. But it wouldn't last
forever.

•••
It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on
spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is
happening. June set a wedding date, Saturday, October
10.
Neil's brother, an African Methodist/episcopal
reverend from Albany, Georgia, was going to marry
them in the backyard under the myrtle trees. June laid

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out all their plans one night at dinner. She would come
walking down an aisle of rose petals, wearing a white
rayon suit with frog closings that Mabelee was sewing
for her. I could not picture frog closings. June drew a
picture of one on a tablet, and afterward I still could not
picture them. Lunelle had been commissioned to make
her a wedding hat, which I thought was very courageous
of June. There was no telling what she would end up
with on her head.

Rosaleen offered to bake the wedding cake
layers, and Violet and Queenie were going to decorate it
with a "rainbow theme."

Again, all I can say is how brave June was.
One afternoon I went to the kitchen in the
middle of the afternoon, nearly dying of thirst, wanting
to fill a jug with water and take it back to the river, and
found June and August clinging to each other in the
middle of the floor.
I stood outside the door and watched, even
though it was a private moment. June gripped August's
back, and her hands trembled.
"May would've loved this wedding," she said.
"She must've told me a hundred times I was being
stubborn about Neil. Oh, God, August, why didn't I do it
sooner, while she was still alive?"

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August turned slightly and caught sight of me in
the doorway.

She held June, who was starting to cry, but she
kept her eyes on mine. She said, "Regrets don't help
anything, you know that."

•••
The next day I actually felt like eating. I
wandered in for lunch to find Rosaleen wearing a new
dress and her hair freshly plaited. She was poking tissues
into her bosom for safekeeping.
"Where did you get that dress?" I said.
She turned a circle, modeling it, and when I
smiled, she turned another one. It was what you would
call a tent dress—yards of material falling from her
shoulders without benefit of waistband and darts. It had
a bright red background with giant white flowers all over
it. I could see she was in love with it.
"August took me into town yesterday, and I
bought it," she said. I felt startled suddenly by the things
that had been going on without me.
"Your dress is pretty," I lied, noticing for the first
time there were no lunch fixings anywhere.
She smoothed her hands down the front of it,
looked at the clock on the stove, and reached for an old
white vinyl purse of May's that she'd inherited.
"You going somewhere?" I said.

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"She sure is," said August, stepping into the
room, smiling at Rosaleen.

"I'm gonna finish what I started," Rosaleen said,
lifting her chin. "I'm gonna register to vote."

My arms dropped by my sides, and my mouth
came open. "But what about—what about you being…
you know?"

Rosaleen squinted at me. "What?"
"A fugitive from justice," I said. "What if they
recognize your name? What if you get caught?"
I cut my eyes over at August.
"Oh, I don't think there'll be a problem," August
said, taking the truck keys off the brass nail by the door.
"We're going to the voter drive at the Negro high
school."
"But—"
"For heaven's sake, all I'm doing is getting my
voter's card," said Rosaleen.
"That's what you said last time," I told her.
She ignored that. She strapped May's purse on
her arm. A split ran from the handle around onto the
side.
"You wanna come, Lily?" said August.
I did and I didn't. I looked down at my feet,
tanned and bare.
"I'll just stay here and make some lunch."

404

August lifted her eyebrows. "It's nice to see
you're hungry for a change."

They went onto the back porch, down the steps.
I followed them to the truck. As Rosaleen got in, I said,
"Don't spit on anybody's shoes, okay?"

She let out a laugh that made her whole body
shake. It looked like all the flowers on her dress were
bobbing in a gust of wind. I went back inside, boiled two
hot dogs, and ate them without buns. Then I headed
back to the woods, where I picked a few bachelor
buttons that grew wild in the plots of sunshine before
getting bored and tossing them away.

•••
I sat on the ground, expecting to sink down into
my dark mood and think about my mother, but the only
thoughts I had were for Rosaleen. I pictured her
standing in a line of people. I could almost see her
practicing writing her name. Getting it just right. Her big
moment. Suddenly I wished I'd gone with them. I wished
it more than anything. I wanted to see her face when
they handed her her card. I wanted to say, Rosaleen, you
know what? I'm proud of you.
What was I doing sitting out here in the woods?
I got up and went inside. Passing the telephone
in the hallway, I had an urge to call Zach. To become
part of the world again. I dialed his number.

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When he answered, I said, "So what's new?"
"Who's this?" he said.
"Very funny," I told him.
"I'm sorry about… everything," he said. "August
told me what happened." Silence floated between us a
moment, and then he said, "Will you have to go back?"
"You mean back to my father?"
He hesitated. "Yeah."
The minute he said it, I had the feeling that's
exactly what would happen. Everything in my body felt
it. "I suppose so," I said. I coiled the phone cord around
my finger and stared down the hall at the front door. For
a few seconds I was unable to look away, imagining
myself leaving through it and not coming back.
"I'll come see you," he said, and I wanted to cry.
Zach knocking on the door of T. Ray Owens's house. It
could never happen.
"I asked you what was new, remember?" I didn't
expect anything was, but I needed to change the
subject.
"Well, for starters, I'll be going to the white high
school this year."
I was speechless. I squeezed the phone in my
hand. "Are you sure you wanna do that?" I said. I knew
what those places were like.

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"Somebody's got to," he said. "Might as well be
me."

Both of us, it seemed like, were doomed to
misery.

Rosaleen came home, a bona fide registered
voter in the United States of America. We all sat around
that evening, waiting to eat dinner, while she personally
called every one of the Daughters on the telephone.

"I just wanted to tell you I'm a registered voter,"
she said each time, and there would be a pause, and
then she'd say, "President Johnson and Mr. Hubert
Humphrey, that's who. I'm not voting for Mr. Pisswater."
She laughed every time, like this was the joke of jokes.
She would say, "Goldwater, Pisswater, get it?"

This went on even after dinner, just when we'd
think she had it out of her system, out of the complete
blue, she'd say, "I'll be casting my vote for Mr. Johnson."

When she finally wound down and said good
night, I watched her climb the stairs wearing her red-
and-white voter-registration dress, and I wished again
that I'd been there. Regrets don't help anything, August
had told June, you know that. I ran up the stairs and
grabbed Rosaleen from behind, stopping her with one
foot poised in the air, searching for the next step. I
wrapped my arms around her middle.

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"I love you," I blurted out, not even knowing I
was going to say this.

•••
That night when the katydids and tree frogs and
every other musical creature were wound up and going
strong, I walked around the honey house, feeling like I
had spring fever. It was ten o'clock at night, and I
honestly felt like I could've scrubbed the floors and
washed the windows.
I went over to the shelves and straightened all
the mason jars. then took the broom and swept the
floor, up under the holding tank and the generator,
where nobody had swept for fifty years, it looked like. I
still wasn't tired, so I stripped the sheets off my bed and
went over to the pink house and got a set of clean ones,
careful to tiptoe around and not wake anybody up. I got
dust rags and Comet cleanser in case I needed them.
I came back, and before I knew it I was involved
in a fullblown cleaning frenzy. By midnight I had the
place shining.
I even went through my stuff and got rid of some
things. Old pencils, a couple of stories I'd written that
were too embarrassing for anybody to read, a torn pair
of shorts, a comb with most of its teeth missing.
Next I gathered up the mouse bones that I'd kept
in my pockets, realizing I didn't need to carry them

408

around anymore. But I knew I couldn't throw them away
either, so I tied them together with a red hair ribbon and
set them on the shelf by the fan. I stared at them a
minute, wondering how a person got attached to mouse
bones. I decided sometimes you just need to nurse
something, that's all.

By now I was starting to get tired, but I took my
mother's things out of the hatbox—her tortoiseshell
mirror, her brush, the poetry book, her whale pin, the
picture of us with our faces together—and set them up
on the shelf with the mouse bones. I have to say, it
made the whole room look different.

Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How
nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes
and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart
be what it is.

•••
The next morning I showed up in the kitchen
with the whale pin fastened to my favorite blue top. A
Nat King Cole record was going. "Unforgettable, that's
what you are." I think it was on to drown out all the
commotion the pink Lady Kenmore washer was making
on the porch. It was a wondrous invention, but it
sounded like a cement mixer. August sat with her
elbows on the tabletop, drinking the last of her coffee
and reading another book from the bookmobile.

409

When she lifted her eyes, they took in my face,
then went straight to the whale pin. I saw her smile
before she went back to her book.

I fixed my standard Rice Krispies with raisins.
After I finished eating, August said, "Come on out to the
hives. I need to show you something."

We got all decked out in our bee outfits—at least
I did. August hardly ever wore anything but the hat and
veil.

Walking out there, August widened her step to
miss squashing an ant. It reminded me of May. I said, "It
was May who got my mother started saving roaches,
wasn't it?"

"Who else?" she said, and smiled. "It happened
when your mother was a teenager. May caught her
killing a roach with a fly swatter. She said, "Deborah
Fontanel, every living creature on the earth is special.
You want to be the one that puts an end to one of
them?"' Then she showed her how to make a trail of
marshmallows and graham crackers."

I fingered the whale pin on my shoulder,
picturing the whole thing. Then I looked around and
noticed the world. It was such a pretty day you couldn't
imagine anything coming along to spoil it.

According to August, if you've never seen a
cluster of beehives first thing in the morning, you've

410

missed the eighth wonder of the world. Picture these
white boxes tucked under pine trees. The sun will slant
through the branches, shining in the sprinkles of dew
drying on the lids. There will be a few hundred bees
doing laps around the hive boxes, just warming up, but
mostly taking their bathroom break, as bees are so clean
they will not soil the side of their hives. From a distance
it will look like a big painting you might see in a museum,
but museums can't capture the sound. Fifty feet away
you will hear it, a humming that sounds like it came from
another planet. At thirty feet your skin will start to
vibrate. The hair will lift on your neck. Your head will
say, Don't go any farther, but your heart will send you
straight into the hum, where you will be swallowed by it.
You will stand there and think, I am in the center of the
universe, where everything is sung to life.

August lifted the lid off a hive. "This one is
missing its queen," she said.

I'd learned enough beekeeping to know that a
hive without a queen was a death sentence for the bees.
They would stop work and go around completely
demoralized.

"What happened?" I said.
"I discovered it yesterday. The bees were sitting
out here on the landing board looking melancholy. If you
see bees loafing and lamenting, you can bet their queen

411

is dead. So I searched through the combs, and sure
enough she was gone. I don't know what caused it.
Maybe it was just her time."

"What do you do now?"
"I called the County Extension, and they put me
in touch with a man in Goose Creek who said he'd drive
over with a new queen sometime today. I want to get
the hive requeened before one of the workers starts
laying. If we get laying workers, we've got ourselves a
mess."
"I didn't know a worker bee could lay eggs," I
said.
"All they can do, really, is lay unfertilized drone
eggs. They'll fill up the combs with them, and as the
workers naturally die off, there are none to replace
them."
As she lowered the lid, she said, "I just wanted to
show you what a queenless colony looked like."
She lifted back the veils from her hat, then lifted
mine back, too. She held my gaze while I studied the
gold flecks in her eyes.
"Remember when I told you the story of
Beatrix," she said, "the nun who ran away from her
convent? Remember how the Virgin Mary stood in for
her?"

412

"I remember," I said. "I figured you knew I'd run
away like Beatrix did. You were trying to tell me that
Mary was standing in for me at home, taking care of
things till I went back."

"Oh, that's not what I was trying to tell you at
all," she said.

"You weren't the runaway I was thinking about. I
was thinking about your mother running away. I was just
trying to plant a little idea in your head."

"What idea?"
"That maybe Our Lady could act for Deborah and
be like a stand-in mother for you."
The light was making patterns on the grass. I
stared at them, feeling shy about what I was going to
say. "I told Our Lady one night in the pink house that she
was my mother. I put my hand on her heart the way you
and the Daughters always do at your meetings. I know I
tried it that one time before and fainted, but this time I
stayed on my feet, and for a while after that I really did
feel stronger. Then I seemed to lose it. I think what I
need is to go back and touch her heart again."
August said, "Listen to me now, Lily. I'm going to
tell you something I want you always to remember, all
right?"
Her face had grown serious, intent. Her eyes did
not blink.

413

"All right," I said, and I felt something electric
slide down my spine.

"Our Lady is not some magical being out there
somewhere, like a fairy godmother. She's not the statue
in the parlor. She's something inside of you. Do you
understand what I'm telling you?"

"Our Lady is inside me," I repeated, not sure I
did.

"You have to find a mother inside yourself. We
all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to
find this part of ourselves inside." She held out her hand
to me. "Give me your hand."

I lifted my left hand and placed it in hers. She
took it and pressed the flat of my palm up against my
chest, over my beating heart. "You don't have to put
your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and
consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need
to get through life," she said. "You can place it right here
on your own heart. Your own heart."

August stepped closer. She kept the pressure
steady against my hand. "All those times your father
treated you mean, Our Lady was the voice in you that
said, "No, I will not bow down to this. I am Lily Melissa
Owens, I will not bow down." Whether you could hear
this voice or not, she was in there saying it."

414

I took my other hand and placed it on top of
hers, and she moved her free hand on top of it, so we
had this black-and-white stack of hands resting upon my
chest.

"When you're unsure of yourself," she said,
"when you start pulling back into doubt and small living,
she's the one inside saying,

"Get up from there and live like the glorious girl
you are." She's the power inside you, you understand?"

Her hands stayed where they were but released
their pressure.

"And whatever it is that keeps widening your
heart, that's Mary, too, not only the power inside you
but the love. And when you get down to it, Lily, that's
the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just
to love—but to persist in love."

She paused. Bees drummed their sound into the
air. August retrieved her hands from the pile on my
chest, but I left mine there.

"This Mary I'm talking about sits in your heart all
day long, saying, 'Lily, you are my everlasting home.
Don't you ever be afraid. I am enough. We are enough.'"

I closed my eyes, and in the coolness of morning,
there among the bees, I felt for one clear instant what
she was talking about.

415

When I opened my eyes, August was nowhere
around. I looked back toward the house and saw her
crossing the yard, her white dress catching the light.

•••
The knock on the door came at 2:00 P.M. I was
sitting in the parlor writing in the new notebook Zach
had left at my door, setting down everything that had
happened to me since Mary Day.
Words streamed out of me so fast I couldn't keep
up with them, and that's all I was thinking about. I didn't
pay attention to the knock. Later I would remember it
didn't sound like an ordinary knock. More like a fist
pounding.
I kept writing, waiting for August to answer it. I
was sure it was the man from Goose Creek with the new
queen bee.
The pounding came again. June had gone off
with Neil. Rosaleen was in the honey house washing a
new shipment of mason jars, a job that belonged to me,
but she'd volunteered for it, seeing how badly I needed
to write everything out. I didn't know where August was.
Probably in the honey house, helping Rosaleen.
I look back and wonder: how did I not guess who
was there?
The third time the knocking came, I got up and
opened the door.

416

T. Ray stared at me, clean-shaven, wearing a
white short sleeved shirt with chest hair curling through
the neck opening.

He was smiling. Not a smile of sweet adoring, I
hasten to say, but the fat grin of a man who has been
rabbit hunting all day long and has just now found his
prey backed up in a hollow log with no way out. He said,
"Well, well, well. Look who's here."

I had a sudden, terror-stricken thought he might
that second drag me out to his truck and hightail it
straight back to the peach farm, where I would never be
heard from again. I stepped backward into the hallway,
andwitha forced politeness that surprised me and
seemed to throw him offstride, I said, "Won't you come
in?"

What else was I going to do? I turned and forced
myself to walk calmly into the parlor.

His boots clomped after me. "All right, goddamn
it," he said, speaking to the back of my head. "If you
want to pretend I'm making a social visit, we'll pretend,
but this ain't a social visit, you hear me? I spent half my
summer looking for you, and I'm gonna take you out of
here nice and quiet or kicking and scream ing—don't
matter which to me."

I motioned to a rocking chair. "Have a seat if you
want to." I was trying to look ho-hum, when inside I was

417

close to full blown panic. Where was August? My breath
had turned into short, shallow puffs, a dog pant.

He flopped into the rocker and pushed back and
forth, that got-you-now grin glued on his face. "So
you've been here the whole time, staying with colored
women. Jesus Christ."

Without realizing it, I'd backed over to the statue
of Our Lady. I stood, immobilized, while he looked her
over. "What the hell is that?"

"A statue of Mary," I said. "You know, Jesus'
mother." My voice sounded skittish in my throat. Inside,
I was racking my brain for something to do.

"Well, it looks like something from the junkyard,"
he said.

"How did you find me?"
Sliding up on the edge of the cane seat, he dug in
his pants pocket until he brought up his knife, the one
he used to clean his nails with. "It was you who led me
here," he said, puffed up and pleased as punch to share
the news.
"I did no such thing."
He tugged the blade out of the knife bed, pushed
the point into the arm of the rocker, and carved out little
chunks of wood, taking his sweet time to explain. "Oh,
you led me here, all right. Yesterday the phone bill
came, and guess what I found on there? One collect call

418

from a lawyer's office in Tiburon. Mr. Clayton Forrest.
Big mistake, Lily, calling me collect."

"You went to Mr. Clayton's and he told you
where I was?"

"No, but he has an old-lady secretary who was
more than happy to fill me in. She said I would find you
right here."

Stupid Miss Lacy.
"Where's Rosaleen?" he said.
"She took off a long time ago," I lied.
He might kidnap me back to Sylvan, but there
was no need for him to know where Rosaleen was. I
could spare her that much at least.
He didn't comment on Rosaleen, though. He
seemed happy to carve up the arm of the rocking chair
like he was all of eleven years old, putting his initials in a
tree. I think he was glad he didn't have to fool with her. I
wondered how I would survive back in Sylvan. Without
Rosaleen.
Suddenly he stopped rocking, and the nauseating
smile faded off his mouth. He was staring at my shoulder
with his eyes squinted almost to the closed position. I
looked down to see what had grabbed his attention and
realized he was staring at the whale pin on my shirt.
He got to his feet and walked over to me,
deliberately stopping four or five feet away, like the pin

419

had some kind of voodoo curse on it. "Where did you
get that?" he said.

My hand went up involuntarily and touched the
little rhinestone spout. "August gave it to me. The
woman who lives here."

"Don't lie to me."
"I'm not lying. She gave it to me. She said it
belonged to—" I was afraid to say it. He didn't know
anything about August and my mother.
His upper lip had gone white, the way it did
when he was badly upset. "I gave that pin to your
mother on her twenty-second birthday," he said. "You
tell me right now, how did this August woman get it?"
"You gave this pin to my mother? You did?"
"Answer me, damn it."
"This is where my mother came when she ran
away from us. August said she was wearing it the day
she got here."
He walked back to the rocker, shaken-looking,
and eased down onto the seat. "I'll be goddamned," he
said, so low I could hardly hear him.
"August used to take care of her back when she
was a little girl in Virginia," I said, trying to explain.
He stared into the air, into nothing. Through the
window, out there in the Carolina summer, I could see
the sun beating down on the roof of his truck, lighting up

420

the tips of the picket fence that had all but disappeared
under the jasmine. The truck was spattered with mud,
like he'd been trolling the swamps looking for me.

"I should have known." He was shaking his head,
talking like I wasn't in the room. "I looked for her
everywhere I could think. And she was right here. Jesus
Christ, she was right here."

The thought seemed to awe him. He shook his
head and looked around, as if thinking, I bet she sat in
this chair. I bet she walked on this rug. His chin quivered
slightly, and for the first time it hit me how much he
must've loved her, how it had split him open when she
left.

Before coming here, my whole life had been
nothing but a hole where my mother should have been,
and this hole had made me different, left me always
aching for something, but never once did I think what
he'd lost or how it might've changed him.

I thought about August's words. People can start
out one way, and by the time life gets through with
them they end up completely different. I don't doubt he
started off loving your mother. In fact, I think he
worshiped her.

I had never known T. Ray to worship anyone
except Snout, the dog love of his life, but seeing him

421

now, I knew he'd loved Deborah Fontanel, and when
she'd left him, he'd sunk into bitterness.

He jabbed the knife into the wood and got to his
feet. I looked at the handle sticking in the air, then at T.
Ray as he walked around the room touching things, the
piano, the hatrack, a Look magazine on the drop-leaf
table.

"Looks like you're here by yourself?" he said.
I could feel it coming. The end of everything.
He walked straight toward me and reached for
my arm. When I jerked away, he brought his hand across
my face. T. Ray had slapped me lots of times before,
clean, sharp smacks on the cheek, the kind that cause
you to draw a quick, stunned breath, but this was
something else, not a slap at all. This time he'd hit me
full force. I'd heard the grunt of exertion escape his lips
as the blow landed, seen the momentary bulge of his
eyes. And I'd smelled the farm on his hand, smelled
peaches.
The impact threw me backward into Our Lady.
She crashed onto the floor a second before I did. I didn't
feel the pain at first, but sitting up, gathering my feet
under me, it slashed from my ear down to my chin. It
caused me to drop back again onto the floor. I stared up
at him with my hands clutched at my chest, wondering if
he would pull me by my feet outside to his truck.

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He was shouting. "How dare you leave me! You
need a lesson, is what you need!"

I filled my lungs with air, tried to steady myself.
Black Mary lay beside me on the floor, giving off the
overpowering smell of honey. I remembered how we'd
smoothed it into her, every little crack and grain till she
was honey-logged and satisfied. I lay there afraid to
move, aware of the knife stuck in the arm of the chair
across the room. He kicked at me, his boot landing in my
calf, like I was a tin can in the road that he might as well
kick because it was there in front of him.

He stood over me. "Deborah," I heard him
mumble. "You're not leaving me again." His eyes looked
frantic, scared. I wondered if I'd heard him right.

I noticed my hands still cupped over my chest. I
pressed them down, hard into my flesh.

"Get up!" he yelled. "I'm taking you home."
He had me by the arm in one swoop, lifting me
up. Once on my feet, I wrenched away and ran for the
door. He came after me and caught me by the hair.
Twisting to face him, I saw he had the knife. He waved it
in front of my face.
"You're going back with me!" he yelled. "You
never should have left me."

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It crossed my mind that he was no longer talking
to me but to Deborah. Like his mind had snapped back
ten years.

"T. Ray," I said. "It's me—Lily."
He didn't hear me. He had a fistful of my hair and
wouldn't let go. "Deborah," he said.
"Goddamn bitch," he said.
He seemed crazy with anguish, reliving a pain
he'd kept locked up all this time, and now that it was
loose, it had overwhelmed him. I wondered how far he'd
go to try and take Deborah back. For all I knew, he might
kill her.
I am your everlasting home. I am enough. We are
enough.
I looked into his eyes. They were full of a strange
fogginess.
"Daddy," I said.
I shouted it. "Daddy!"
He looked startled, then stared at me, breathing
hard. He turned loose my hair and dropped the knife on
the rug. I stumbled backward and caught myself. I heard
myself panting. The sound filled up the room. I didn't
want him to see me look down at the knife, but I
couldn't help myself. I glanced over to where it was.
When I looked back at him, he was still staring at me.

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For a moment neither of us moved. I couldn't
read his expression. My whole body was shaking, but I
felt I had to keep talking.

"I'm—I'm sorry I left like I did,"
I said, taking small steps backward.
The skin over his eyes sagged down onto his
eyelids. He looked away, toward the window, like he
was contemplating the road that had brought her here.
I heard a creaking floorboard in the hallway
outside. Turning, I saw August and Rosaleen at the door.
I gave them a quiet signal with my hand, waving them
away. I think I just needed to see it through by myself, to
be with him while he came back to his senses. He
seemed so harmless, standing there now.
For a moment I thought they were going to
ignore me and come in anyway, but then August put her
hand on Rosaleen's arm and they eased out of sight.
When T. Ray turned back, he fastened his eyes
on me, and there was nothing in them but an ocean of
hurt. He looked at the pin on my shirt. "You look like
her," he said, and him saying that, I knew he'd said
everything.
I leaned over and picked up his knife, bent the
blade closed, and handed it to him. "It's all right," I said.
But it wasn't. I had seen into the dark doorway
that he kept hidden inside, the terrible place he would

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seal up now and never return to if he could help it. He
seemed suddenly ashamed. I watched him pushing out
his lips, trying to gather back his pride, his anger, all that
thunderclap he'd first come striding in here with. His
hands were moving in and out of his pockets.

"We're going home," he said.
I didn't answer him, but walked over to Our Lady
where she lay on the floor and lifted her upright. I could
feel August and Rosaleen outside the door, could almost
hear their breathing. I touched my cheek. It was swelling
where he'd hit me.
"I'm staying here," I said. "I'm not leaving." The
words hung there, hard and gleaming. Like pearls I'd
been fashioning down inside my belly for weeks.
"What did you say?"
"I said I'm not leaving."
"You think I'm gonna walk out of here and leave
you? I don't even know these damn people." He seemed
to struggle to make his words forceful enough. The
anger had been washed out of him when he'd dropped
the knife.
"I know them," I said. "August Boatwright is a
good person."
"What makes you think she would even want you
here?"

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"Lily can have a home here for as long as she
wants," August said, stepping into the room, Rosaleen
right beside her. I went and stood with them. Outside, I
heard Queenie's car pull into the driveway. It had a
muffler you couldn't mistake. Apparently August had
called the Daughters.

"Lily said you'd run off," T. Ray said to Rosaleen.
"Well, I guess I'm back now," she said.
"I don't care where the hell you are or where you
end up," he said to her. "But Lily's coming with me."
Even as he said it, I could tell he didn't want me,
didn't want me back on the farm, didn't want to be
reminded of her. Another part of him—the good part, if
there was such a thing—might even be thinking that I'd
be better off here.
It was pride now, all pride. How could he back
down?
The front door opened, and Queenie, Violet,
Lunelle, and Mabelee stumbled into the house, all
wound up and looking like they had their clothes on
backward. Queenie stared at my cheek.
"Everybody all right?" she said, out of breath.
"We're all right," said August. "This is Mr. Owens,
Lily's father. He came for a visit."
"I didn't get an answer at Sugar-Girl's or Cressie's
house,"

427

Queenie said. The four of them lined up beside
us, clutching their pocketbooks up against their bodies
like they might have to use them to beat the living hell
out of somebody.

I wondered how we must look to him. A bunch of
women—Mabelee four foot ten, Lunelle's hair standing
straight up on her head begging to be braided, Violet
muttering, "Blessed Mary," and Queenie—tough old
Queenie—with her hands on her hips and her lip shoved
out, every inch of her saying, I double-dog dare you to
take this girl.

T. Ray sniffed hard and looked at the ceiling. His
resolve was crumbling all around him. You could
practically see bits of it flaking off.

August saw it, too. She stepped forward.
Sometimes I forgot how tall she was. "Mr. Owens, you
would be doing Lily and the rest of us a favor by leaving
her here. I made her my apprentice beekeeper, and
she's learning the whole business and helping us out
with all her hard work. We love Lily, and we'll take care
of her, I promise you that. We'll start her in school here
and keep her straight."

I'd heard August say more than once, "If you
need something from somebody, always give that
person a way to hand it to you."

428

T. Ray needed a face-saving way to hand me
over, and August was giving it to him.

My heart pounded. I watched him. He looked
once at me, then let his hand drop to his side.

"Good riddance," he said, and moved toward the
door. We had to open up our little wall of women to let
him through.

The front door banged against the back wall as
he jerked it open and walked out. We all looked at each
other and didn't say a word. We seemed to have sucked
all the air from the room and were holding it down in
our lungs, waiting to be sure we could let it out.

I heard him crank the truck, and before reason
could stop me, I broke into a run, racing into the yard
after him.

Rosaleen called after me, but there was no time
to explain. The truck was backing along the driveway,
kicking up dirt. I waved my arms. "Stop, stop!"

He braked, then glared at me through the
windshield. Behind me, August, Rosaleen, and the
Daughters rushed onto the front porch. I walked to the
truck door as he leaned his head out the window.

"I just have to ask you," I said.
"What?"

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"That day my mother died, you said when I
picked up the gun, it went off." My eyes were on his
eyes. "I need to know," I said.

"Did I do it?"
The colors in the yard shifted with the clouds,
turned from yellow to light green. He ran his hand across
his face, stared into his lap, then moved his eyes back to
me.
When he spoke, the roughness was gone from
his voice. "I could tell you I did it. That's what you wanna
hear. I could tell you she did it to herself, but both ways
I'd be lying. It was you who did it, Lily. You didn't mean
it, but it was you."
He looked at me a moment longer. Then he
inched backward out leaving me with the smell of truck
oil. The bees were everywhere, hovering over the
hydrangea and the myrtle spread across the lawn, the
jasmine at the wood's edge, the lemon balm clustered at
the fence. Maybe he was telling me the truth, but you
could never know a hundred percent with T. Ray.
He drove away slowly, not tearing down the road
like I expected. I watched till he was gone from sight,
then turned and looked at August and Rosaleen and the
Daughters on the porch. This is the moment I remember
clearest of all—how I stood in the driveway looking back

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at them. I remember the sight of them standing there
waiting. All these women, all this love, waiting.

I looked one last time at the highway. I
remember thinking that he probably loved me in his
own smallish way. He had forfeited me over, hadn't he?

I still tell myself that when he drove away that
day he wasn't saying good riddance; he was saying, Oh,
Lily, you're better off there in that house of colored
women. You never would've flowered with me like you
will with them.

I know that is an absurd thought, but I believe in
the goodness of imagination. Sometimes I imagine a
package will come from him at Christmastime, not the
same old sweater-socks-pajama routine but something
really inspired, like a fourteen-karat-gold charm
bracelet, and in his card he will write, "Love, T. Ray." He
will use the word "love," and the world will not stop
spinning but go right on in its courses, like the river, like
the bees, like everything.

A person shouldn't look too far down her nose at
absurdities.

Look at me. I dived into one absurd thing after
another, and here I am in the pink house. I wake up to
wonder every day.

•••

431

In the autumn South Carolina changed her color
to ruby red and wild shades of orange. I watch them
now from my upstairs room, the room June left behind
when she got married last month. I could not have
dreamed such a room. August bought me a new bed and
a dressing table, white French Provincial from the Sears
and Roebuck catalog. Violet and Queenie donated a
flowered rug that had been laying around in their extra
room going to waste, and Mabelee sewed blue-and-
white polka dot curtains for the windows with fringe
balls along the hem. Cressie crocheted four eight-legged
octopuses out of various colors of yarn to sit on the bed.
One octopus would have been enough for me, but it's
the only handicraft Cressie knows how to do, so she just
keeps doing it.

Lunelle created me a hat that outdid every other
hat she'd ever made, including June's wedding hat. It
reminds me a little of the pope's hat. It is tall, just goes
up into the air and keeps going. It does have more
roundness than the pope's hat, however. I expected
blue, but no, she sewed it in golds and browns. I think
it's supposed to be an old-fashioned beehive. I only wear
it to the Daughters of Mary meetings, since anywhere
else it would stop traffic for miles.

Clayton comes over every week to talk to us
about how he's working things out for me and Rosaleen

432

back in Sylvan. He says you cannot beat up somebody in
jail and expect to get away with it. Even so, he says, they
will drop all the charges against me and Rosaleen by
Thanksgiving.

Sometimes Clayton brings his daughter Becca
over when he comes. She's a year younger than me. I
always picture her like she is in the photograph in his
office, holding his hand, jumping a wave. I keep my
mother's things on a special shelf in my room, and I let
Becca look at them but not touch. One day I will let her
pick them up, since it seems that's what a girlfriend
would do.

The feeling that they are holy objects is already
starting to wear off. Before long I'll be handing Becca my
mother's brush, saying, "Here, you wanna brush your
hair with this? You wanna wear this whale pin?"

Becca and I watch for Zach in the lunchroom and
sit with him every chance we get. We have reputations
as "nigger lovers," which is how it is put to us, and when
the ignoramuses ball up their notebook paper and throw
it at Zach in the hallway, which seems to be a favorite
pastime between classes, Becca and I are just as likely to
get popped in the head as he is. Zach says we should
walk on the other side of the hall from him. We say,
"Balled-up notebook paper—big deal."

433

In the photograph by my bed my mother is
perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us
both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will
take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and
forgive us again.

I sit in my new room and write everything down.
My heart never stops talking. I am the wall keeper now. I
keep it fed with prayers and fresh rocks. I wouldn't be
surprised if May's wailing wall outlasted us all. At the
end of time, when all the world's buildings have
crumbled away, there it will be.

Each day I visit black Mary, who looks at me with
her wise face, older than old and ugly in a beautiful way.
It seems the crevices run deeper into her body each time
I see her, that her wooden skin ages before my eyes. I
never get tired of looking at her thick arm jutting out,
her fist like a bulb about to explode. She is a muscle of
love, this Mary.

I feel her in unexpected moments, her
Assumption into heaven happening in places inside me.
She will suddenly rise, and when she does, she does not
go up, up into the sky, but further and further inside me.
August says she goes into the holes life has gouged out
of us.

This is the autumn of wonders, yet every day,
every single day, I go back to that burned afternoon in

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August when T. Ray left. I go back to that one moment
when I stood in the driveway with small rocks and
clumps of dirt around my feet and looked back at the
porch. And there they were. All these mothers. I have
more mothers than any eight girls off the street. They
are the moons shining over me.

435

Acknowlegements

I gratefully acknowledge the following sources,
not only for the information they offered me about
bees, beekeeping, and honey making but also for
providing the epigraph at the beginning of each chapter:
The Dancing Bees by Karl Von Frisch, The Honey Bee by
James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould, The Queen Must
Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men by William
Longgood, Man and Insects by L. H. Newman, Bees of
the World by Christopher O'Toole and Anthony Raw, and
Exploring the World of Social Insects by Hilda Simon.

436